The mask industry has recently witnessed an increasing number of new MoSi mask blank materials which are quickly
replacing the older materials as the standard in high end mask shops. These new materials, including OMOG (opaque
MoSi on glass) and high transmission (Hi-T) films, are driven foremost by the need to reduce feature size through
resolution enhancement techniques (RET). The subject of this paper is a new low stress, Hi-T material which addresses
the challenges presented by transitioning to smaller technology nodes including difficulties with pattern transfer,
cleaning and repair. This material, based on currently employed MoSi films, eliminates process steps and utilizes a
thinner overall substrate stack than currently used Hi-T schemes allowing an increase in critical dimension (CD)
uniformity and feature resolution and more robustness due to a lower aspect ratio. While this new material is MoSi
based the small compositional change requires, in some cases, a significant change in processing. Among the most
impacted areas are the etch, clean and repair steps. Given the potential for defects to manifest on masks, repair is an
invaluable step that can significantly impact the overall yield and lead to a reduction in cycle time1. The Carl Zeiss
MeRiT® electron beam mask repair line provides the most advanced repair capabilities allowing a wide range of repairs
to be performed on a number of mask types2. In a joint effort between MP Mask Technology Center LLC and Carl Zeiss
SMT, this paper focuses on the benefits of the new Hi-T mask blank and the challenges it presents to the repair
community. The differences between the new low stress, Hi-T material and current Hi-T technologies are presented and
on site compositional analysis is performed with x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) to illuminate the compositional
differences. The development of a repair process for the new material utilizing the on-site Carl Zeiss MeRiT® MG 45 is
presented along with several repairs and their AIMSTM results.
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